Re: [PATCH] make st seekable again

[Alan Cox]

On Mer, 2005-03-09 at 21:58, Kai Makisara wrote:
> While waiting for the application to be fixed, it was decided to restore 
> the old behaviour of the tape drivers.

Which means tar won't get fixed 8(

> I don't think implementing proper read-only lseek for tapes is worth the 
> trouble (reliable tracking of the current location is tricky). Purist 
> kernels can refuse lseeks. Pragmatic kernels can allow lseeks until 
> refusing those won't break common applications.

The problem is the existing behaviour code isn't just 'not useful' its
badly broken. No locking, no overflow checks, updates the wrong variable
etc. It is asking for nasty accidents with critical user data.

Alan
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